1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a modular sun visor and a method of assembling a sun visor.
2. Background Art
The use of sun visors in vehicles is well known. Attached to the vehicle roof adjacent to the windshield, sun visors are made in various sizes and are made from a variety of materials. Typical sun visors comprise a stiff inner core, often made of a rigid polymer, surrounded by a cloth covering. Because of the wide variation in the size of vehicles, many different sizes of sun visors are necessary to accommodate the needs of vehicle manufacturers. In a standard manufacturing process, each different size of sun visor may require different tooling, which adds to production costs. In addition, inventory costs can increase as the many different sizes of sun visors are warehoused.
One attempt to make a sun visor more modular, and therefore increase the number of components common to different sizes of sun visors, is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,131,985 issued to Twietmeyer et al. on Oct. 17, 2000. Twietmeyer et al. describes a sun visor with a variety of modular core components covered with an outer covering. The core components can be assembled such that they can be used in visor assemblies for a number of different makes and models of vehicles. However, in order to accommodate different sizes of outer coverings, the core component assemblies must themselves be manufactured in different lengths. Hence, at least some of the shortcomings of prior art sun visors remains.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a modular sun visor that overcomes the shortcomings of prior art sun visors by further reducing the number of differently sized components that are required to produce sun visors of different sizes.
It is an aspect of the present invention to provide a modular sun visor that can be used on a wide variety of vehicle makes and models.
It is another aspect of the invention to provide a modular sun visor that reduces tooling changes and production setup time for the sun visor manufacturer.
It is a further aspect of the invention to provide a modular sun visor that reduces production and inventory costs.
Accordingly, a sun visor assembly for use in a vehicle is provided that comprises a first visor bezel and a second visor bezel. The second visor bezel is attached to the first visor bezel. A visor blade is at least partially captured between the two visor bezels.
Another aspect of the invention provides a system of modular sun visors that comprises a plurality of first visor bezels. A plurality of second visor bezels are each configured to mate with any one of the first visor bezels. The system also includes a plurality of visor blades, each one differing from the others by at least one dimension. Each of the visor blades can be captured by any two of the mating first and second visor bezels.
A further aspect of the invention provides a method of assembling a sun visor for a vehicle that comprises providing a first visor bezel that has a support portion. The first visor bezel is configured to be attached to any visor blade chosen from an inventory of differently sized visor blades. The method further includes choosing a visor blade from the inventory of differently sized visor blades and capturing the chosen visor blade between the first visor bezel and a second visor bezel. The second visor bezel has a support portion that is configured to be in substantial alignment with the support portion of the first visor bezel when the chosen visor blade is captured between the two visor bezels.